Terrorism Docudrama: Political Violence, Cinema and Television in the Global Age

Dr. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann 

The latest attacks in Europe proved: terrorism persists to be a global challenge. Indeed, during the short 21st century, experiences of global terrorism became a central aspect of public life and culture in many societies worldwide. Audio-visual media offer specific frames to understand and interpret this experience. Especially the docudrama genre with its inherent crisis structure and heterogeneous narrative and visual elements shows a specific affinity for collective experiences of violence. By investigating the depiction of terrorist events in international docudramas, the course offers the opportunity to explore the interrelation between popular culture, the perception of political violence and global media formats. It introduces ways of understanding and analyzing interpretative frames of terrorism in visual media and discusses different theoretical concepts and approaches in order to explore, how the experience of global terrorism is mediated and framed on television and in the cinema

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